A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing solution that combines private and public cloud services to meet all of an enterprise’s computing needs.
People like private clouds because they retain complete control over their IT infrastructure, data, and security posture. But maintaining a local private cloud can be a major undertaking and requires a continuous investment in hardware, licensing, resources, and personnel.
People like public clouds because they can lease needed services, paying only for resources consumed, without investing in infrastructure while a managed services provider (MSP) handles all the support details.
A hybrid cloud combines the best of both worlds. An organization benefits by keeping control over mission-critical data and applications as with an on-premises solution (a.k.a., the private cloud), while leveraging off-premises resources (a.k.a., public clouds) for cost-effective long term data storage and shared access to powerful computing assets and services the organization could not implement as cost-effectively on its own.
Hybrid clouds offer flexibility to shift workloads between clouds and spin up new virtual assets as needs change over time. With the proper software tools in place to connect them all for efficient communications between each service, IT administrators can manage their entire cloud environment from a single pane of glass.
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